Top 20 Most Requested Words to Pronounce in 2022

from my American English Pronunciation Q&A Meetup group

This post may be a little late for a Gregorian calendar new year greeting but it’s right on time for a lunar calendar new year greeting, so Happy New Year cheers to you!

The Guidebook: How to Practice American English Speaking & Listening Skills is still the special new year’s price of $20.23. Start 2023 with renewed motivation and strategies for how to keep improving your speaking skills.

What words did we practice the most in 2022?

My Meetup group, American English Pronunciation Q&A, meets on Mondays at 6:00-7:00pm and Tuesdays 12:00-1:00pm (US Eastern time). In the Meetups, I ask people what words they want to practice so these words have all been requested by people who are asking me, not me providing them. At the end of the year, I combine all the spreadsheets and find out what were the most requested words.

Looks Like vs Sounds Like

Most of the words on this list are spelled differently than they sound or they have more than one pronunciation option. The spreadsheets I use in every Meetup have what the word looks like in column A in regular spelling.

Column B spells the word the way that it actually sounds (in regular letters, not IPA symbols) and uses capital letters for the stressed syllable.

Column C identifies the sound of the vowel in the stressed syllable which is important because that’s the sound you’re going to pronounce with higher pitch and longer duration.

Then I use the word in a group, phrase, or short sentence so it’s not just an isolated word.

Here’s what it looks like and you can copy the Google sheet or download it as a pdf from my product page.

Listen

I recorded myself pronouncing all these words just like I do after every Meetup. If you can’t attend the pronunciation or intonation Meetups, you can always watch the videos I make after each one to hear new words and sentences. Visit the whole channel with the link below or click on the video to go directly to the Top 20 list.

Adastra Speech YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@adastraspeech

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The pdfs that were attached to previous newsletters (with links to videos) are now also posted on the product page, not all of them yet, but I’m working on posting all of them. The Gumroad store: https://adastraspeech.gumroad.com/